Coherent network interfaces for fine-grain communication

Using coherence can improve performance by facilitating burst transfers of whole cache blocks and reducing control overheads. This paper describes an attempt to explore network interfaces that use coherence, i.e., coherent network interfaces (CNIs), to improve communication performance. First, it reports on the development and optimization of two mechanisms that CNIs use to communicate with processors. A taxonomy and comparison of four CNIs with a more conventional NI are then presented.